the too-full plate of a happy generalist — what's on your plate?

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Louise’s Edinburgh

For a day while I was in Edinburgh, I got out of my hostess Sara’s hair so that she could finish writing her term paper and met my babysitter Louise.Louise performed with my twin brother on a cruise ship, so we had met a couple times before my trip. She’s left the cruise ship life for now and is back at school in the UK (for glass blowing! She’s a pretty cool gal.). Luckily, she was home in Scotland when I was visiting. We spent a full day walking around her hometown; she was a natural tour guide and had great historical nerdy nuggets to share as we traipsed across town. We also completed a bit of a food tour as we went (Louise totally understands how I like to travel) – flat whites and pastries at Peter’s Yard in the morning, the hippest soup café (I now want to have a party that involves soup flights and bread pairings), samples of unique Scottish liqueurs, chocolate and more coffee in the afternoon at the home of the Scottish barista champion – it was all delicious and wonderful. Amongst other things, Louise and I talked a lot about our enthusiasm for food and playing in the kitchen. Since there’s an ocean currently separating our two kitchens, we’ve decided to do a bit of a virtual cooking club – picking a recipe that we both try, and sharing the results with each other. It’s like Louise is my baking pen pal (probably the best kind of pen pal?).For our first recipe, Louise picked this buckwheat and apple cake. She substituted pear for the apple, and we both reduced the sugar by 1/3 cup. It’s a really nice dense cake (and gluten free), with an interesting hint of flavour from the buckwheat. It’s the kind of cake that goes really nicely with a milky latte (or a beer). Cheers to food and friends, wherever they may be:)